


Quite a Hell-Raiser

by DestielsDestiny



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Flashbacks, Hank McCoy is awesome, Hurt Logan, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know enough about motorcycles for this, M/M, Motorcycles, Old Friends, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Slash, Versatile Logan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7297414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post X1 and pre-X2. The Professor maintains that he had a very wild youth. The Wolverine will believe it when he sees it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Keychain

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [XavierineFest2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/XavierineFest2016) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Get Charles on Logan’s bike. Any context will do.
> 
> I know this first chapter is quite short, but it was post this or not be able to fulfill the prompt, and I really didn't want to let this one go. There will be several more chapters, which will feature a lot more actual motorcycle riding.

It starts with a set of keys. 

Logan arrives back at the mansion astride One-Eye’s purloined bike after less than two weeks, the shortest time he’s spent on the road in his entire admittedly shortened memory. He tries not to dwell too hard on the why as he cruises into the suspiciously open garage. 

Sure enough, Summers is standing at the open mouth of the million-car garage. One of three apparently, or so the Professor cheerfully informed him after they both woke up from their respective comas. The man had seemed inordinately pleased that Logan was still around when he woke up. Logan was too caught up in the rather startling sight of the formerly serene, suit wearing monk dressed in a bathrobe at his bedside, grinning like a demented smiley face to point out that most of the whole sticking around part was down to the Prof’s old buddy Magnets, and the aforementioned coma. 

Logan has the perfect disarming insult poised on his tongue, defenses well martialled against One-Eye’s truly awesome bitchface as he jauntily swerves the bike into it’s place sideways, barely missing Cyclops’ toes. 

A defense that promptly dies and falls apart as the punk’s epic rant is cut off at, “Logan, taking other people’s property is completely unaccep-,” by the flying silver object which jingles alarmingly past said punk’s visor. 

Logan catches it a mere inch from his face, eyes too busy drinking in the sight of Wheels’ new suit to pay much attention to Cyclops’ hanging open jaw, or observe much about the object he just caught beyond the fact it was a key chain. Magenta. Nice. 

The suit, not the key. That was just plain silver, affixed to a simple metal ring with something rather unusual about it. 

“Welcome back Logan. I have something for you, in the back of the second garage. I trust you’ll find it satisfactory enough to return Scott’s keys to him on your way.” All of which is said over the Professor’s rapidly retreating back, the wheels of his automatic chair gliding smoothly over the lip of the garage door. 

Logan pockets the keys with a happy whistle, arching Cyke’s set through the air as he brushes by. To his credit, the man does catch them. Barely. 

Logan can’t quite resist a parting shot as he ploughs through the side door, somehow suddenly just knowing the way too the second garage, like he’s been using it all his life. 

“You’re low on gas Bub. And I’m not one of your damn students, so spare the lecture for somehow who actually cares.” Weak, as insults go, but he has more important things to concern himself with. 

The second garage turns out to be an alarmingly old, wooden structure that might have once been a barn. There is only one thing in it, so putting the key to the machine is rather easy. 

It’s easily the most beautiful motorbike Logan’s ever laid eyes on. 

The Professor’s voice filters through his head as he runs his hand lovingly over the metal handgrips. 

_Erik gave it to me. When we were younger._

Logan is torn between the frankly devastating image of Charles Xavier in leather, and the sudden sinking feeling as he stares at the key chain in his hand. The key chain that has no discernable space where the key might have been able to find it’s way onto the ring through. 

The Prof in leather wins rather quickly. 

Logan settles gently on the seat, feeling the power of the engine even switched off. 

He wonders if it’s possible to send old Mags a fruit basket.


	2. The Mansion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank McCoy is a good pack mate.  
> Or, how Logan learned to flirt.

It’s not that Logan doesn’t know how to flirt. Rather, he must have known at some point he supposes, but like everything else in the last fifteen years, he’s had little motivation to relearn a skill that he can’t remember if he ever possessed in the first place. 

At least he had little motivation until he was attacked by a large, hairy mountain man wrapped in a fur cape in Alaska and taken to a top secret school in Upstate New York that had enough private funding for its own stealth plane. 

Before he woke up and found the world’s greatest telepath was not only inside his head, he was also rather more attractive than was strictly fair. And had a weird obsession with horses for some reason. Logan still hasn’t figured that last one out. Or the first one, for that matter. 

Logan has been more or less permanently bunking at the School for a little less than three months before he finally clues in that Charles’ broad smiles over morning coffee, his slight hand brushes when passing cups of coffee at lunch, his honest to god _winks_ over dessert are something that seems to be reserved for only Logan. 

He’s attempting to pass a bowl of strawberry ice cream past Bobby Drake and that flame kid attempting to melt each other through stares to Rogue one evening when it finally hits him, a flash of blue winking gently at him across the long table, before a bald head retilts to resume its rapt attention to Scott’s discussion of lesson plan reorganization. Logan drops the ice cream because somehow he’s just clued in here. _Charles likes him._

Logan feels no small amount of satisfaction that the ice cream goes down the back of flame kid’s collar. 

Somewhere in the resulting squawking, it occurs to Logan that he has no idea how to tell Charles that he likes him back. 

00

Logan isn’t sure when the unspoken _I will stay out of your head unless you invite me in Logan_ became part of his dynamic with the Professor. Granted, this is before Scott started arranging mandatory Powers and Boundaries awareness seminars like football matches, but still. 

He just knows that somewhere between returning to the mansion, receiving him most prized possession of at least the last fifteen years, and he suspects a lot longer if he was remotely like who he is now back before he remembers being himself, and coming down to breakfast the following morning, the Professor started staying out of his head completely. 

Logan never quite gets it, but he’ll one day get it just enough to know that it had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Charles. 

Logan suspects that Charles would probably never forgive him if he plotted the murder of the man’s former lover and sister in one fell swoop, but that suspicion is the only thing that stops him from ever following through on it. 

00

Telepathy apparently not an option, Logan starts his plan of “reciprocating Charles’ feelings” by winking back at dinner. 

Bobby asks him if he’s having a fit. Charles doesn’t appear to notice. 

He tries passing Charles his dessert next. It manages to spill chocolate sauce on Charles’ grandmother’s table cloth. 

He follows various teenagers around for a couple days in an attempt to figure out what seems to be working so well for them, if how busy he and Scott are kept on their nightly bedroom patrols is anything to go by. Scott tells him to stop scaring the students.  
He tries dropping by the Prof’s office for hours on end. He learns a lot about King Arthur, and more about Erik Lensherr than he ever wanted to know. Such as the guy’s first and last names. And not much else. 

Somehow, for all Scott’s rather pointed, strangely mandatory sex-ed talks, using his words never occurs to him. 

00  
The Furball’s only got one frame on his desk, mostly hidden behind piles upon piles of clutter, paper and medical supplies melding together into a terrifying tangle that Logan tries very, very hard not to flinch from the first time he spies a glint of metal winking out at him from the wreckage. 

Hank McCoy spends very little time at the Mansion, as far as Logan has determined in the scant months he’s roosted there. Not that he particularly cares in any case, the two of them far from getting along swimmingly. 

Logan will fully admit his rather asinine “Ya roost here often, Fuzzball?” may have been just a touch too colloquial and deliberately acerbically backwoodsy to make for an endearing first line of introduction. Still, he isn’t sure splintering Charles’ doorframes with his body was an appropriate response level, particularly from a certifiable nerd in a goddarn sweater vest of all things, the plaid clashing oddly with wisps of pastel blue fur poking out at odd angles. 

Hence Logan’s perfectly understandable avoidance of Hank’s basement domain has nothing what so ever to do with his also perfectly understandable aversion to all things vaguely medical equipment related. And if Logan chooses to continue that self-enforced avoidance during the eighty-nine percent of the time that McCoy is hundreds of miles away from the Mansion doing he really doesn’t care to ask what, well, he’s just being polite then, isn’t he?

All of which goes absolutely no where to explain why he’s currently flinching into a corner of said lab space, metal shining from every surface, claws poking painfully against his knuckle bones, a blue furred hand settling with an almost comforting weight against the base of his neck. 

Logan doesn’t remember enough about what if means to have feral instincts to know if he was an Alpha, or how he would even tell, but fuck if that hand doesn’t feel so effing good, for just a moment. 

Logan’s claws slide an inch forward in time with his snarl, bone crunching and slicing the same way it always does. And damnit if Furball’s face only looks even more concerned, and not the slightest bit intimidated. In fact, he’s regarding Logan more or less the same way he did that bedraggled, three-legged kitten Jubes dragged in here a couple weeks back. 

And oh yes, there was the reason for this visit. Medical equipment did the strangest things to his memory these days. He hopes to heaven that’s not a memory itself. 

Said miniature scrap of fur is nowhere in sight at the moment, as convenient as a distraction would be at this point, as furry blue digits have begun _massaging_ his tense neck muscles of all things. 

Logan’s eyes slide inexorably back to the desk, his hunger for any knowledge about his past drawing him like a magnet to attempt to guess precisely what it was that triggered whatever this currently is. He finds the frame instead. And suddenly he claws are slicing back through bone, his accompanying wince melting like it was never begun at all, his jaw slackening with a slight scrape of near-cracked enamel. 

“Alright there, Logan?” It’s an inane question, but Logan is far too occupied to give that much thought. He jerks forward, nearly dislodging Hank from his half crouch at Logan’s shoulder, and exactly how tall is he-oh right, Logan had been crouching. How had he not noticed that?

Those thoughts and others swirl around his mind like bugs on a crowded windshield, his thoughts attempting to focus past the fear and shattered memories, the bone deep agony and the unfamiliar scent of something that whispers _pack_ in the most incomprehensible ways, because sweater-vest wearing blue teddy bear right here. 

“What is that?” Logan is half-proud of how non-plussed large and blue looks for a moment. 

“It’s a picture frame Logan. Surely they had such items even in whatever small town you sprang from.” Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. Logan lets his lip curl just slightly, holding in his temper for the first time in a very long time, because for the first time in a very long time, something was far more important than his own anger and fear. 

Well, mostly. “I know what it is ya ninny, I was askin’ what it’s of.” Surprisingly, blue hands reach past Logan, discreetly maintaining just enough distance not to brush into the personal space he didn’t know he had until the Prof gave that talk last week, for the kids apparently, but with mandatory attendance from all residents for some reason, and when Logan had time to become a resident he isn’t sure. 

He suspects he hasn’t been a resident of anything in a very long time. He thinks he might just like it. A little bit anyway. 

The frame is suddenly a few inches from Logan’s nose, blue nails stabbing at a group of smiling faces, their youth and happiness shining away the yellowing age of the photo-paper. 

There’s at least half-a-dozen people in the picture, including a serious looking pup with chestnut hair and geeky enough glasses that Logan realizes he might just be standing beside the man that boy grew up to be, however odd he looks in this picture, human in a way that just feels wrong somehow. Once again, these thoughts fly by like inconsequential insects, along with a slightly alarmed recognition of the shark-like grin the man draped over the central figure in the photo sports, for all that Logan’s never seen the version of that man he’s met grin before. 

Once again, all of it pales in comparison to the more important aspect, this time embodied by the grinning mess of floppy hair, tweed, and an honest to goodness leather jacket projecting his electric blue eyes out of the photo like a lighthouse blaring through time to declare to the world, Charles Francis Xavier was once a very, very cool dude. 

Logan has been spending far too much time around teenagers. And the Prof is way hotter now than he was then. 

Logan stares at the picture long enough that Hank actually shifts deliberately and sighs, although notably he continues holding the photograph. The sigh saps the last of Logan’s patience, along with his focus for long enough for him to blow the whole thing on a rather cheep shot, even he’ll admit. 

“I like ya better in blue, Mate.” They shatter four doorframes that time, three of which were made of steel. The Prof bans Logan from the basement, which he is more than fine with. 

He wakes up the next morning to find artificial bird feathers littering every inch of his room, coated with some sticky substance that takes roughly three days to clean up. The entire lot is dyed blue. Logan is less fine with this, but is almost willingly to admit he probably entirely deserves it. 

On the plus side, the Prof makes Cyclops help him clean it up. Apparently chuckling at the sight of Logan coated head to toe in blue feathers wasn’t such a good plan in front of said wheelchair bound telepath. 

Scott mutters “Teacher’s pet” as soon as Charles’ back is turned, but Logan ignores him. And he totally ignores the rather unseemly way those words make him suddenly hot all over. Totally.

Furball’s other eleven percentage of time is up later that same week, and Logan watches him go with something that is definitely, entirely relief. Really. He’s almost sure. 

His room is thankfully feather free that night, although he approaches the white envelope sitting on his pillow with well-earned caution. A photo slides out, not a hint of blue in sight. 

Except for the pair of piercing eyes that stare at him from out of the leather coated arms of the world’s second-most-dangerous mutant. 

There’s an inscription on the back, written in a lovely cursive, the blue ink as bold as the nail grooves left in the paper by overly long claws. Logan can sympathize. 

_Charles always did love leather; in case you were needing ideas._

An honest-to-goodness snarky little _You’re Welcome Logan_ is written below in a slightly loopier but still elegant scrawl. 

And that’s how Logan ends up taking dating advice from the Beast of all mutants. 

00

Logan attempts to invite the Prof out for drinks two more times in the following weeks, the sum result of which is receiving a lecture about alcohol consumption from Cyke, since he never quite got to the talking part of asking and skipped right to the drinking alone part of a rejection he’s pretty sure is almost completely implicit at this point. Because Logan’s inability to complete a sentence around the man becomes rather a moot point when the man in question is a frigging telepath. 

Attempt two kicks off a truly shitty week, one which culminates in Cyclops literally dragging Logan downstairs to attend yet another lecture on the proper use of powers, and when did he start letting these people touch him with such impunity. 

Logan’s claws are on one of their truly spectacularly levels of aching days, enough hot pricks of agony coursing down his arms and legs that it feels like the molten metal is still as liquid as it was the day it was pressurized and forced through his skin and muscles. A flash of water and blood later, and Logan is gasping like a fish, barely able to keep his head off the polished surface of the mess hall table top, let alone worry about whether anyone has noticed. 

It isn’t until a firm hand is grasping his shoulder, the quiet hum of the Prof’s chair a counterpoint to Logan’s laboured rasps for breath that the topic of the day’s lecture finally sinks in. 

_It is important to remember that personal boundaries apply as equally to our individual abilities as they do to every other area of our lives. Just like touch or speech, we must be mindful of how our abilities effect the people around us._

Charles’ words echo rather hollowly in Logan’s head, which feels like a windy attic now more than ever, because how could he have been that thick. “Logan?” The voice is soft, concerned, carefully measured, and by far the nicest way anyone has ever said his name. It is also entirely out loud, not even the whisper of a touch in his mind. 

_I myself, for example, spent many more years learning how to stay out of other peoples’ thoughts than I required to learn how to get in to those thoughts. Control of one’s gifts is sometimes the hardest of all things to achieve. I would only ever enter your thoughts if first explicitly invited, or if the situation necessitated it. This is a courtesy which we must all learn to extend to those around us, regardless of who they are._

Charles would have made a great preacher Logan decides. He also wonders how much learning, or even choice, was actually involved in that getting in part. He suspects not a great deal. The private chuckle he gets from that does little to allay Charles’ concerned frown or slightly firmed grip. It also serves to remind Logan of how much of an idiot he’s been. 

Because somewhere along the way, in a world where the most significant thing he learned from the last three dozen lectures on this topic was that boundaries were a thing at all, he forgot that telepath doesn’t necessarily equal snoop. 

And that Charles, for all his awe-inspiring levels of awesomeness, his killer abs and his ability to make any suit look good regardless of what shade of fuchsia it is, will always still be Charles. 

Or, the most decent person Logan is ever likely to meet. Wow, he’s such an idiot. 

Charles’ “Come along Logan, I want Henry to look at you,” followed by a surprisingly firm shove to his feet takes an understandable backseat to Scott’s slight told-you-so smirk, glowing unmistakably from under his ruby glasses. Logan lets himself be steered towards the door by an insistent Professor, half his brain attempting to figure out if the Furball somehow managed to sneak back into the Mansion when Logan wasn’t looking because they were only fifty or so percent into his latest swath of eighty-nine percent away time. 

Still, the other half has the presence of mind to nod jerkily at Scott in full acknowledgement that this time, he deserves every curve of that subtle smirk. 

Nobody organizes that many self-help lectures. 

00

It takes another three months for Logan to figure out how to purchase a leather jacket without asking either of his two totally unsolicited advisors on flirting techniques for help.

**Author's Note:**

> Steward!Xavier, original universe, doesn’t relate to prequels at all. Set at some nebulous time after X1, assume Logan stayed at the mansion after investigating Alkali Lake.


End file.
